She was reaching for the cords that laced up her gown, pulling at them impatiently. Helping her, he felt the cord tangle into a knot; he tugged hard, and the cord broke. She laughed huskily and, lifting herself, swept her gown and her loosely-fastened undergarments away in one wide gesture.
Kneeling up, swiftly undoing his tunic, pulling his shirt over his head and removing his hose and breeches, he stared at her, lying naked on the rugs and furs. The firelight lit up the curves of breasts, hip bones, the muscles on her thighs. She was strong, aye, he could see that — fleetingly, as from another world, he recalled her saying that she had recently developed muscles she hadn’t known she had — but yet she retained her woman’s shape. Narrow waist, full breasts, belly curving down to that dark, inviting place …
She, too, was studying him. Staring, steadily, at his erect penis, reaching out, touching.
He said, ‘I will not hurt you, I swear.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I feel — for the first time, I know what it is to want.’ She put her hands on his shoulders, pulling him down towards her. ‘Please,’ she murmured, ‘please … I don’t know what — don’t know how-’
He lowered himself down on top of her, gently, supporting himself so as not to crush her. Putting one arm behind her head, his face nuzzling against hers as he dropped little kisses on her cheeks, her nose, finally, lingeringly, her mouth, he let his other hand move slowly and steadily right down her body. Caressing her neck, the deep hollows above her collarbones, her breast, her nipple, her waist, her belly.
‘It’s all right, Joanna my sweet,’ he said. ‘I know how.’
* * *
They lay exhaused on their bed of rugs and furs. Josse, drowsy, slipping in and out of sweet dreams, felt the sweat begin to cool on his naked body. Lifting his head, he looked around him, and found the end of one of the furs. Pulling it towards him, he draped it over himself and Joanna.
Joanna.
She lay cradled on his chest, breathing deeply, and he thought she was asleep. Oh, but she had every right to sleep, after that great explosion of energy! Great saints, he’d never known anything like it — it had been as if seven years of dammed-up sexual response had been released in one vast, shattering orgasm.
Her first.
And, penetrating her deeply, he had felt every spasm of it with her, holding her as she cried with the joy and the ecstacy of it, sobbing and laughing at the same time as, finally, she knew what it was her body had been saving up for her.
His own ejaculation had been almost as earth-shattering; it was a long time since he had bedded a woman, but, more than that, he didn’t think he had ever been aroused to the extent she had aroused him. That combination of innocence and natural, untapped, eager sexuality had raised him to heights he hadn’t known himself capable of …
Amazingly, he found himself becoming firm again. So soon? Ah, but she’s asleep, I mustn’t disturb her.
Think about something else. Think about … Joanna.
No! Think about the frost outside, the icy ponds and puddles, the dark, the chill wind …
He felt her move, stretching out her legs then twining them in his, one thigh thrusting in between his, and she reached down under the covers and enclosed his penis in her hand, gently at first, then, as she felt him stiffen, with plainer intent.
‘Do you think,’ she said, rolling over on to him and kissing him, ‘we might do that again?’
And, kissing her back, wanting to laugh and, oddly, half wanting to cry, he said, ‘I don’t see any reason why not.’
Chapter Thirteen
He was awake before her.
In the pale early light, he studied her face. Asleep, she looked younger; her habitual expression of wariness put strain in her features, giving her a false maturity. But now …
How old would she be? he wondered. Her son was seven, and Joanna said she had been sixteen when he was conceived, so that made her twenty-three. At that moment, she didn’t look it. She looked about eighteen.
She was sleeping with her head on his shoulder, his arm around her. Leaning against him as she was, he could feel the soft warmth of her breasts. He was very tempted to caress them, gently to wake her, arouse her-
No. Let her sleep. Poor lass, this was probably the first night in a long time that she’d allowed herself to relax into deep, healing sleep. With him there — he hoped he wasn’t flattering himself — at last she could let her vigilance slip a little and take the proper rest she must so sorely have needed.
To take his mind and his body off thoughts of making love to her, he looked around the bedchamber. He had noticed almost nothing about it last night save for the wide wooden-framed bed, with its thick woollen hangings and its pile of covers. Now, easing himself up a little so as to be able to view the whole room, he studied the rest of it.
It must surely have been the old people’s chamber — Joanna’s mother’s great-uncle and his wife — he decided, for it had an air of long use about it. Not that it was dirty — far from it. Joanna must be maintaining Mag Hobson’s exacting standards, Josse thought, for, throughout the house, there was an air of freshness, so that the visitor received the impression that the rushes on the floor had been newly replaced, the dark corners swept clean of dusty cobwebs, the bedclothes taken outside into the sunshine, hung on a line and given a good beating.
He was dozing now, drifting in and out of light sleep, and in a half-waking, half-sleeping vision, he thought he saw Mag, as she must have been in life, a sturdy and vigorous woman, ever on the move, sharp eyes ever observant to the smallest detail. Here she was now, in Josse’s dream, coming up the narrow stair into the bedchamber with a besom in her hand, saying, ‘Joanna! Come along, my girl, no time to lie idle! Just you stir yourself, now, and get this room swept out, you don’t want your company thinking you can’t keep a clean house, do you?’
He saw her stand over the bed, and there was a sudden softening of her stern features as she looked down at Joanna lying in his arms. ‘Aye, that’s right,’ she said gently. ‘You sleep, child. Sleep, and, when you wake, let him bear a little of your burden.’
With a start, Josse opened his eyes. The dream had been so vivid that he was quite surprised to find that he and Joanna were the only occupants of the room.
* * *
She finally awoke around mid-morning. Josse had slipped out of bed, collected his clothes and tiptoed out of the chamber and down the stair into the hall below, finding his way to the kitchen to build up the fire and heat water for a sketchy wash. Dressed, he returned to the bedroom to find her awake, lying propped up on an elbow and blinking in the soft sunshine coming through the narrow window.
‘You let me sleep!’ she greeted him, a faint note of accusation in her tone.
‘Aye. You needed your rest.’
She smiled at him, a wide, happy grin. ‘I did indeed. You rode me hard, sir knight, and fair wore me out.’
He came to sit on the edge of the bed, taking her outstretched hands and turning them over to drop a kiss in each palm. She smelt arousingly of sex …
Turning his mind from thoughts of their lovemaking — which took a great deal of effort — he said, ‘I wasn’t referring to that. I meant that, for once, you had no need to sleep with one ear cocked for danger.’ No. That sounded self-congratulatory. ‘That is, there were two of us to listen for untoward sounds, and-’
She was laughing, and he found himself joining in, despite the fact that he was pretty sure she was laughing at him.
‘Ah, yes,’ she said teasingly, ‘I can just picture it. There we are, deep in the throes of our passionate embraces, and suddenly you say, “Hark! What was that, my lady? A rattle of the barn door? A warning whinny from one of the horses?”’